That was under the headline, "City to honor man slain helping friend." The man was Arvie Jenkins, 21, former Princeton High football player, college student and father of three children. He was the only fatality among five shootings, a rape and various violence and assorted assaults during the Coors Light Jazz Festival last July. Police said he died trying to help a friend, who was being robbed.
Sounds like a good guy. So I went to look at his memorial on Friday.
I couldn't find it.
I found a pager store, a leather shop, The Phoenix restaurant and a funeral home. But no memorial. So I began to speculate.
Or maybe it's there, but not too obvious, because council members wanted to appease the black community by doing something, without upsetting too many white folks by doing too much.
I like the last theory. It's so "Cincinnati."
Our city may be geographically located on a kink in the Ohio River, but culturally, we're halfway between San Francisco and Singapore. And when you turn down "race street," the mood can swing suddenly and violently, or get paralyzed in the crosswalk.
During the past week, the city manager's plan to deal with this year's Jazz Festival was run over. Councilman Dwight Tillery called it "martial law." Councilman Charles Winburn said Cincinnati was cracking down on the Jazz Festival because the city administration "tends to overreact to ethnic groups."
Translation: It would be racist to put more police on the streets, close off downtown, enforce curfews and limit street vending to protect the public.
That might be quite a joke to Mr. Jenkins -- a black man who was killed by a black man, Brandon Davis, now serving 18 to life.
The Jazz Festival may not be for "blacks only," but that's the way most of white Cincinnati sees it. It's impolite to say so, but most of white Cincinnati tries to leave work early and "get outta Dodge" when the Jazz Festival comes to town, and both crowds seem to prefer it that way.
Last year, there were 50,000 visitors for the Jazz Festival and the Taste of Ebone street party. We also had the Ohio American Legion and Free Will Baptist Convention in town. But the 97 people arrested last year were not Legionaires and Baptists. Neither were their victims.
Here's a letter I received last year from Charlotte Mahle, an out-of-town visitor: "Upon leaving the opera, we became snarled in traffic from Jazzfest, the opera and other events. Even though we had to go only a few blocks to reach the highway, we became stuck in traffic for two hours and 45 minutes. We sat for an hour and thirty minutes at Race and Ninth streets, watching a car that was on fire burn until it went out because no fire trucks could get to it. . . . All the time we sat there, people were drinking, smoking marijuana, urinating in the streets, having one grand time. We also heard shots while we were waiting and we found out later a man had been murdered. . . . The entire situation was very volatile, and could have erupted into a large-scale disturbance. . . . Your city is very lucky there was only one murder, a few other shootings and only a couple of fires that night."
I checked that out with a cop who was there, Lt. Roger Wolf. He said it sounded accurate. "I was a little scared at times," he said. But he wouldn't hesitate to work the event again this year. "It's not martial law," he said of increased policing. "At Riverfest, it was not until we eliminated alcohol that we made that a family event. We can handle this too."
Ms. Mahle didn't think she'd come back to Cincinnati. But the Jazz Festival will return next July. And after a year of study by a city task force, we may end up with no plan at all -- except the usual fall-back: Leave it up to the cops, and if they shoot someone, or get physical arresting someone, we can all blame them for "brutality." We like our law and order -- as long as the law doesn't order anyone around.
Oh, about that memorial. I called the mayor's office, where I was told nothing has been done yet, but it has been "referred." Imagine how long it would take if the vote had not been unanimous.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
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